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What is our responsibility as educators?

Every student deserves a safe, accepting, and positive school climate that expects all students to succeed. To ensure our education environments are providing equitable teaching and learning environments for all children, it is crucial all schools examine their current policies and procedures to ensure all students are being met with care, compassion, and being taught in classrooms where their needs are not only met but also understood. The need for relationships and connection is ever more prevalent now due to the COVID pandemic. A priority of all schools should be the focus on building staff to student and peer to peer relationships and connection. Youth suicide continues to rise, stress and anxiety rates rise, as well as teacher burnout. All of these items reflect the desire and need for people to connect. The time is now. The main goal of this resource is to help improve the lives of Indiana students, educators, and families.

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Every student deserves a safe, accepting, and positive school climate that expects all students to succeed. To ensure our education environments are providing equitable teaching and learning environments for all children, it is crucial all schools examine their current policies and procedures to ensure all students are being met with care, compassion, and being taught in classrooms where their needs are not only met but also understood.

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The Indiana Department of Education and the Indiana Department of Child Services (DCS) have had conversation regarding educational neglect and how to better provide supports to educators on this topic due to an abundance of calls to the Child Abuse and Neglect Hotline. This resource is meant to provide additional insight. First and foremost, it is an educator's job to report any suspicion of neglect to the DCS hotline immediately. Regarding educational neglect and when it meets legal sufficiency to screen-in for an assessment, there are several factors the caseworkers consider. To best understand, it is important to know the structured decision making tool's (SDM) definition of educational neglect. This is the tool the hotline staff uses when they take a report.

Educational Neglect:
A child age 5 or 6 is currently or was previously enrolled in school, and the parent is now refusing to allow or failing to support the child in attending school or receiving homeschooling. Consider number of absences in the current year (less than 10 unexcused absences should not be considered educational neglect), attempts to engage the parents, and parents' response to these attempts.

A child is age 7-12 and there is unreasonable delay, refusal, or failure on the part of the caregiver to seek, obtain, and/or maintain education for the child. Consider number of absences in the current year (less than 10 unexcused absences should not be considered educational neglect), attempts to engage the parents, and parents' response to these attempts.

A child is age 13 or older, enrolled in school, and not attending to the extent that educational neglect is present.

Child has over ten (10) unexcused absences during the current school year;

Caregiver has been made aware of the situation; AND

Information provided indicates that the caregiver refuses to allow or appears unable to support the child in attending school

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The Indiana Department of Education and the Indiana Department of Child Services (DCS) have had conversation regarding educational neglect and how to better provide supports to educators on this topic due to an abundance of calls to the Child Abuse and Neglect Hotline. This resource is meant to provide additional insight.

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Posted: Fri, 07/27/2018 - 11:28am

As stated in the Indiana's Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plan, "Indiana hopes to take a proactive approach to chronic absenteeism by incorporating it into the statewide accountability system as an indicator of school quality and student success." This toolkit provides ready-made materials and proactive approaches teachers, administrators, staff, and community partners can use for outreach to families. In addition, this toolkit provides resources schools can use to assess their own attendance practices and guide improvement. Districts and schools can begin with the self-assessment found under the Capacity Building heading.

Last year, nearly five million students were chronically absent from school, meaning they missed close to a month of school. The Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) is dedicated to reducing this number by interrupting this pattern and cultivating habits of good attendance starting in pre-school, so children have the opportunity to learn and succeed in school. An applied survey conducted by Balfanz and Byrnes (2012) found only 17 percent of students who were chronically absent in kindergarten and grade one were reading proficiently by grade three, versus 64 percent of students who were not chronically absent in kindergarten and grade one. In the 2018-2019 academic year, 11 percent of Indiana students were considered chronically absent. A model attendee rate has been established, noting the total number of students that demonstrate either persistent attendance (attendance rate of at least 96 percent) or improving attendance (attendance rate increased by at least three percentage points from prior to current school year) during the accountable year. The model attendee rate is calculated based on those students enrolled at the school for at least 162 days, or 90 percent of the school year.

Additional Resources

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Posted: Fri, 07/27/2018 - 11:28am As stated in the Indiana's Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plan, "Indiana hopes to take a proactive approach to chronic absenteeism by incorporating it into the statewide accountability system as an indicator of school quality and student success."

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FAST Panel Definition for Student Handbook

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FAST Panel Definition for Student Handbook

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A strength based collaborative approach made up of a team of community resources (school, family supports, mental health, law enforcement, and probation) to identify needs and barriers of a student and family/caregivers to come up with a solution for success.

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Becky Murray / Executive Director
beckym@ciswayneco.org

Communities In Schools of Wayne County
Office: (765) 983-2263 / Fax: (765) 939-0508
33 South 7th Street Richmond, IN 47374
www.CISWayneCo.org

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Western Wayne Schools Attendance Protocol (Draft)

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4/16 Overview                Pros: LOVE the uniformity between school’s handbook language and the certified, excused, and unexcused absences. Love the FAST panel idea and they’re excited to watch it grow.  Concerns: They feel much of the attendance contracts and consequences are only affecting students rather than parents. Because of this, our elementary coordinators feels much of the action taken to prevent chronic absenteeism is only going to help middle/high school students. Are the actions taken for high school, middle school, and elementary students all the same? Or will there be variance?                            What we are going to do: Depending on what the school administrators decide with when letters, phone calls, attendance contracts, etc will be taking place, we are thinking we will step in at the 5th unexcused absence. Originally we thought we would step in once an attendance contract has been issued, but we would like to be on the front end. Once a student has a 5th absence, we will take the student on as case managed, and call home to establish a relationship with the parent. This will help us see if there’s anything we can help with and whether the attendance problem stems from the kid or the parent. As far as incentives go, because every school is so different and every case is unique, instead of having a pool of incentives to pull from, we will design each incentive to match the needs of either the parent or the student individually. One thing Becky is working on is having every student sign a CIS consent form as they register for school. For attendance, we are hoping since every student will have signed a consent, that coordinators will have access to run attendance reports through either harmony or PowerSchool. This will help us track attendance and follow up with students as needed. 

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4/16 Overview                Pros: LOVE the uniformity between school’s handbook language and the certified, excused, and unexcused absences. Love the FAST panel idea and they’re excited to watch it grow.  Concerns: They feel much of the attendance contracts and consequences are only affecting students rather than parents. Because of this, our elementary coordinators feels much of the action taken to prevent chronic absenteeism is only going to help middle/high school students. Are the actions taken for high school, middle school, and elementary students all the same? Or will there be variance?                            What we are going to do: Depending on what the school administrators decide with when letters, phone calls, attendance contracts, etc will be taking place, we are thinking we will step in at the 5th unexcused absence. Originally we thought we would step in once an attendance contract has been issued, but we would like to be on the front end. Once a student has a 5th absence, we will take the student on as case managed, and call home to establish a relationship with the parent. This will help us see if there’s anything we can help with and whether the attendance problem stems from the kid or the parent. As far as incentives go, because every school is so different and every case is unique, instead of having a pool of incentives to pull from, we will design each incentive to match the needs of either the parent or the student individually. One thing Becky is working on is having every student sign a CIS consent form as they register for school. For attendance, we are hoping since every student will have signed a consent, that coordinators will have access to run attendance reports through either harmony or PowerSchool. This will help us track attendance and follow up with students as needed. 

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9 things schools can do today to improve attendance

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Ken Kouns, Deputy Prosecutor

Wayne County Prosector's Office

Richmond, Indiana 47374
kkouns@co.wayne.in.us

Tel: (765) 973-9394

Fax: (765) 973-9298

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Angela Jordan

Indiana Department of Child Services

Local Director, Wayne County

54 South 2nd Street

Richmond, IN 47374

Work 765-200-6162

Cell # 765-465-0595

Fax (317) 232-1542

Angela.Jordan@dcs.in.gov

Child Abuse & Neglect Hotline: 800-800-5556

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Wayne County Probation Department

Wayne County Administration Building, lower level

401 East Main Street

Richmond, Indiana  47374

765-973-9279

Kory George

Chief Probation Officer

kgeorge@wayneco.us

Juvenile Probation Officers:

Emily Graham

egraham@wayneco.us

Samantha Lewis

slewis@wayneco.us

DeAdra Baldwin

deadraw@wayneco.us

Gina Glass

gglass@wayneco.us

Morgan Glynn
mglynn@co.wayne.in.us

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National Council on Behavioral Health's Annual Conference - Nashville, TN

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National Council on Behavioral Health's Annual Conference - Nashville, TN

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Several probation officers attended a session highlighting trauma informed social, emotional learning approaches and got to hear the principal featured in this video.

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A trauma-informed approach ensures that students feel safe, supported, and nurtured-to improve their chances of academic success.

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How to Start a Movement? Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy